


Just As You Were, You Come to Me

by beriallen



Category: Gugudan (Band), Korean Actor RPF, 학교 2017 | School 2017 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 05:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12381432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beriallen/pseuds/beriallen
Summary: At one point, they stopped noticing the cameras altogether, and the lines were becoming blurred. With their scripts abandoned, they started performing before “Action,” and continued the act even after “Cut.”





	Just As You Were, You Come to Me

When the beauty show’s producer revealed that that day’s topic would be “First love”—a post-it note plastered on a cue card was completed with a footnote that read: “And all that it entails!”—Sejeong merely laughed nervously. Her unnies looked at her and giggled among themselves. “Ah, our pure maknae,” Honey unnie said as she stroked Sejeong’s hair.

Once the camera started rolling, Sejeong spent the entire segment mostly gaping at the others’ tales of broken hearts. While she had dated before, listening to her unnies made her feel she hadn’t at all. All that yearning! How did she miss it? She thought of the lyric book in her backpack, buried between a makeup case and the book she had been reading for the last six months, and found herself wondering if she could just steal— No, borrow! Borrow their stories. Would her unnies mind? 

“I can’t wait to experience it myself,” she blurted out.

“You will,” Dara unnie rejoined. “Soon.”

She wasn’t aware that soon was soon. 

 

 

 

The first text message came at Busan’s airport, as she was waiting to board her flight back to Seoul. 

Busan was nice. And hot. Mostly hot. As much as meeting new people always gave her an unexplainable sense of thrill, she had to admit she was relieved to be leaving the meet-and-greet event at the overcrowded waterpark—of which she was the CF star—to resume filming in Seoul, no matter how exhausting it could be. 

When the text message came, the still-unfamiliar notification ringtone made her jump in her seat; her manager chuckled at the sight and commented, “Imagine when you girls get your real phones back!” Sejeong just smiled and fished around in her backpack for her phone. No, not _her_ phone; the phone her company lent her temporarily during the course of her drama-filming. “I’m afraid you have to return it once the shooting’s done,” a representative told her with a sad tone in his voice, as if the flip phone were a keeper. Holding it in her hand, Sejeong brushed her thumb against its rough edges; it was technologically-advanced enough to let her receive Kakao messages, yet old-fashioned enough to— Well, to be a flip phone. The night it was handed to her, Mimi unnie winked and said, “Later on, you better delete anything you don’t want them to find before you give it back to them.” Sejeong scoffed at that. “Like what? My call history to jjajangmyeon place?”

But then the text message—the first of what would be many—came.

To this day, Sejeong was still in awe of the weight of meaning a seemingly trivial question could carry.

“Are you on your way home already?”

She blinked.

It wasn’t the fact that Junghyun oppa sent the text. It was the fact that Junghyun oppa sent it to her personally. Any exchange of texts had previously been done inside a group chat, in a non-private environment, and was open for the cast members to see. 

She shook off a feeling of— Of what exactly? She typed her reply—“At the airport now. Should be boarding any moment”—and sent it.

The phone was still in her grasp (for some reason, she didn’t feel like putting it back in her backpack) when the next one came. “You should get some sleep on the plane.”

The clicking noise that each button made as she wrote her message was deafening, and Sejeong angled the phone to shield the screen from her manager without her realizing it. Her sentence was short: “Yes, Oppa.” The time that passed as she contemplated and let her index finger hover over the send button was not.

Like a plane speeding on the runway before taking off, she knew her replying would be the beginning of something she didn’t fully understand yet, something she couldn’t prevent from happening.

She took one last look at her words, brief and inadequate, and hit send.

 

 

 

Back then, when Sejeong first asked permission to visit Junghyun oppa’s waiting room, her manager eyed her hesitantly before deciding to come along and stay with her until she finished discussing a scene with him. About one week after the shoot began, her manager just nodded and let her go by herself. 

There used to be a time when Sejeong entered his waiting room anxiously, holding her hands up in front of her, saying, “I know I’ve probably annoyed you by now,” and Junghyun oppa just gave that easy smile of his and gestured for her to sit next to him. These days, she didn’t even wait to sit down.

(These days, she had stopped calling him “Hyung;” he had asked her to in one of their countless discussions. “At least when we’re rehearsing our scenes.” He let out an embarrassed half-smile and continued, “It’s just weird. You know, when we’re supposed to be in love and—” Sejeong laughed at that and said, “Okay, sunbae.” She added after a while, “Or should I call you oppa? Or sunbae? Or oppa?” He just shrugged in return. “Whatever makes you comfortable, Sejeong-ah.”)

Once, he told her to never come unrehearsed. “Practice until you don’t see the cameras around you when you’re acting,” he said.

At one point, they stopped noticing the cameras altogether, and the lines were becoming blurred. With their scripts abandoned, they started performing before “Action,” and continued the act even after “Cut.”

 

 

 

When the director appeared out of nowhere, startling her and Junghyun oppa, Sejeong looked down and found her fingers wrapped around his wrists; she didn’t even remember when that happened. 

She remembered Junghyun oppa entering the set, she remembered her own joke, she remembered them guffawing together, them playing around. Somewhere in between, her fingers must have ended up circling his wrists, and he just let them be (because, as she found out as she got to know him better, he was only shy in front of people that weren’t her).

“Aww,” the director commented as he strolled past them. “You guys are so cute!”

She hoped no one saw the blush on her cheeks.

 

 

 

Nayoung unnie, who got her priorities straight, asked her once, “What’s he like in real life?”

Hearing that, Mina and Hyeyeon jeered collectively, while the other members cackled and rolled their eyes. Even so, they all turned to Sejeong with expectant looks on their faces. Sejeong bit the inside of her mouth and scanned the room, as if it could provide her with an answer. Someone forgot to close the curtains, and Sejeong could see the silhouette of her company’s building next door through the glass windows. 

“I mean,” she said afterward. “Since I first saw him, I’ve always thought he’s handsome.”

This time, they all oohed out loud. Sally giggled and hit Sejeong’s arm playfully. 

Whatever reaction she’d been expecting, that was not it. “What!?” she protested. “He is! Don’t you guys think he is!? I’m just telling the truth here!”

Haebin unnie shrugged at that. “Yeah, it’s not what you said,” she told Sejeong, then. “It’s the way you said it.”

Sejeong joined the others as they all chuckled afterward. Quietly, she reminded herself to practice acting even more.

 

 

 

What she didn’t know was this: Repeated practices would make her a better actress, and an even better liar.

Sure, she had told lies to her manager before; all the girls had. But not disclosing the fact that she ate a burger when she was supposed to be on a diet was not the same as… This.

“I wonder if I can take a ride in Junghyun sunbae’s car?” It was midnight and they had to go to a different location to shoot the next scene. “I need to rehearse my lines. We’re going to the same place, anyway!”

She wondered if she had sounded weird, if her expression had been believable, if that last sentence had been necessary. Sejeong stared at the manager right in the eye, and drew in a breath. 

Maybe she did get better at acting, maybe her manager was tired (it had been 10 hours since they began filming, after all), but Sejeong got the okay with ease and jogged toward Junghyun oppa’s SUV almost immediately. She wondered if her jogging had given her away.

In the car, the two of them sat at the back, while Junghyun oppa’s manager was hogging the second-row seat. As the engine started and the car glided on the asphalt, the street lamps along the street became the only source of light. Inside, the interior lights were off because “we’re trying to memorize the script without depending too much on it,” as Junghyun oppa said. 

It wasn’t long before Junghyun oppa’s manager slumped in his seat and let out a big snore. The two whipped their head toward each other at the same time at that, making themselves giggle. Another snore, and another giggle shared. They were driving past tall street lamps at that moment, and Sejeong caught a glimpse of his mouth and the way it always crooked a little whenever he smiled too wide. 

The car veered to the right and her script slid down her lap. Sejeong watched it drop and hit her shoe before falling facedown on the mat. Just then, they reached the end of the row of street lamps and the lights disappeared.

Sejeong found herself looking down at complete blackness. She also found out that she had no intention to pick the script up, telling herself it was too dark to see. She realized she had indeed become a better liar. 

There was a small pothole that the car drove through and the driver shouted an apology over his shoulder. Junghyun oppa murmured a “It’s fine,” and Sejeong felt, rather than saw, him shift in his seat. 

Then his hand was cupping her knee. 

Sejeong took in a sharp intake of breath at the warmth of his palm, while an even warmer feeling was stirring in the pit of her stomach. She swallowed and tried to glance at her knee, or where she believed her knee was. When her sight had adjusted to the dark, she could finally make out the outline of his hand; she remembered teasing him about his big hands once.

She found out she had no intention to brush his hand away.

Instead, her own hand moved deliberately toward his. It began with her fingertips grazing their way through the skin on his hand, all the way to his knuckles and the spaces between his fingers. Afterward, covering the back of his hand with her palm became an easy feat for her. 

As the distance to their destination got closer, Junghyun oppa turned his hand around so that their palms met. When he clasped her hand tightly, she returned the favor and didn’t let go until she had to. 

 

 

 

Their first kiss was as uneventful as they come. 

If it had been scripted, it would have been more dramatic. The fact was, it was nowhere to be found in any of their scripts. 

When she was granted the permission to practice at Junghyun oppa’s place, nobody was more shocked than her. There was a possibility that her manager thought other people would be there too. There was also a possibility that her manager took pity on her, for some reason. Whatever it was, she was given two hours.

They already passed the half-hour mark when they were trying to work out a scene. It was one of many where their characters were standing too close for comfort, and Sejeong looked away from him without knowing it. But when she heard a chuckle came out of him, she stared back at him defiantly. 

“It’s easier for you,” she frowned. “You’ve probably done this before with other actresses.”

Junghyun oppa bit his lower lip at that, and reflex drove Sejeong to run her tongue over her own. “Yeah. No,” he mumbled after a beat. “This is different.”

And then it went like this: She blinked once, she became aware of his sudden proximity as he leaned toward her, she involuntarily glanced at his lips. There was a millisecond where she realized what about to take place and she squeezed her eyes shut, puckering her lips slightly. The next thing she knew, his mouth was pressed to hers. What’s more, she was kissing him back.

The kiss didn’t last long, although it didn’t happen in such a short time either. The kiss was more like a meeting of their lips, but it was not without passion nonetheless. She thought about how she would describe _this_ to her members (because she would tell them one day). She figured out it was a thing that happened because it was supposed to. Because unlike their characters, they were no longer in high school and they could kiss if they wanted to (as long as her manager wasn’t around). Because that was what two adults that liked each other usually did. 

Both of them pulled away at the same time, ending the kiss to take a breath in a similar rhythm. She could feel the heat as it seeped into her cheeks, knew very well that—judging from the little smirk that pulled at the edge of his lips—Junghyun oppa noticed the blush that she couldn’t stop from surfacing. She cleared her throat and tried to shrug in a casual manner. “Well, that wasn’t in the script.” 

Her voice cracked as she said so, but even if Junghyun oppa was aware of that, he gave no indication; there was no quiet laugh, no slight smile he usually offered whenever he made fun of her. They had no time for any of those. There was less than one-and-a-half hour left, and he wisely used it to tilt his head to the side and lean closer toward her once more.

She closed her eyes again.

 

 

 

Her birthday this year was her first without her members. The moment the realization hit her, she burst into tears.

She had stopped crying by the time Junghyun oppa visited her waiting room, but he smiled and pointed at the faint circles under his eyes, and she knew her own must look so swollen at the time. 

“Hey,” he said in a low voice as he took a seat next to her. “In just a week, the filming will be over and you’ll be back with them in no time,” he continued, and swallowed.

Somehow that didn’t make her feel better.

 

 

 

What the press photos and countless SNS posts didn’t and couldn’t show was the second after-party at Junghyun oppa’s place. Only a handful of them were present and she was thankful for that, for obvious reasons.

Like this one.

Sejeong had her camera with her, and when she wasn’t drinking or singing, she went around the room to take pictures of and with the others. She was already half-drunk when she spotted Junghyun oppa alone; and maybe it was her half-drunk state that compelled her to grab Dongyoon oppa in the elbow and dragged him all the way to the corner where Junghyun oppa was, so he could snap a photo of them posing side by side. Dongyoon oppa, though, just held the camera in his hand and squinted at them. “You two are going to just stand like this?” he sneered and wagged his finger at them. “Come on!” he exclaimed afterward. “There’s just us here.”

Sejeong wondered how much he knew.

The rest of the night mostly passed in a blur; she would admit that she was probably more than half-drunk at that time. She amazed herself for still remembering that she had to practice a new choreography at noon the next day. Which then led her to this: her saying goodbye before everyone else, Junghyun oppa offering to walk her to the elevator and them ending up having a hushed conversation in the hallway of the apartment building with her back against the wall and his against the one opposite her. 

“I thought you’d be crying,” he was slurring his words, which pretty much informed her that he was just as drunk as her.

There were memories of her performing at a tear-filled concert, of her old variety show’s producer informing her that “it’s not going to work,” of her grandfather lying perfectly still, of—and she hated that, despite her throbbing head, her mind could go back this far—a father waving farewell. “Don’t you know?” she shrugged mindlessly. “People I love leave me all the time.”

She was glad that neither of them were sober enough to react to the word “love.” 

He let out a chuckle out of nowhere, then. He gazed at the ceiling and went quiet too, as if he was thinking about something; and perhaps he was, because he fixed his eyes on her all of sudden, and said, “So—”

What they had was this _dance_. This _thing_ that caused every banter between them to flow flawlessly, every serious discussion to go smoothly. The director once approached them, beaming. “To think we almost got someone else to play our Eunho,” he said. “You kids are meant to be!” 

It was the same _thing_ that made her completely and instantly understand his one word—“So” was a non-complicated way of saying, “So? What’s going to happen between us now?”—and also forced her to lay out all the facts. “I’m a newbie,” she talked matter-of-factly.

“An idol star!”

“You’re a newbie too.”

“True. Sort of.”

“I have, like, schedules.”

“You don’t even have a phone.”

“And you’re the future best actor of the year. Have a great career ahead of you.” When he grunted as a response, she added hurriedly, “You do! You’re brilliant!”

He didn’t reply anything to that, looking down at the carpet instead. Sejeong breathed out a sigh. 

Somewhere between their silence, the phone that wasn’t hers rang and she knew, without peeking at the caller’s ID, that it must be the taxi she booked earlier in the night, a few shots of soju ago. 

The phone rang for the second time. “So—,” he said.

Third time. “So—,” she said.

 

 

 

Sejeong knew she was definitely more than half-drunk at the second after-party when she looked at the polaroid picture of her and Junghyun oppa, the one taken by Dongyoon oppa, and realized that she didn’t remember posing like _that_ for the photo.

She recalled Dongyoon oppa teasing them before he took it—“Come on! There’s just us here”—and urging them to stand closer. What she forgot was how Junghyun oppa so easily draped his arms around her shoulders, and how she so comfortably leaned back on his chest with her fingers around his wrists. 

The two figures in the picture smiled at her with their teeth showing.

Sejeong placed strips of tape on each corner of the photo, and stuck it onto a page in her diary. All around it were other photos of the other actors and staff, notes she exchanged with some of the cast members, numerous kinds of stickers from multiple food trucks. 

She closed the diary and hid it under her pillow.

Then she took the phone, which was never hers and would soon be returned to a dark cupboard somewhere in her company, and started deleting the messages. 

 

 

 

End.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Title is from the last line of gugudan's "Diary."  
> Note: There are different translations of the lyrics.
> 
> 2\. The beauty show I was referring to in the beginning of the story is "Get it Beauty."
> 
> 3\. I must admit I know nothing whether or not Junghyun has his own place/apartment. Then again, this is why it's called a fiction? :D


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